by Rosone,James
He continued, “With the operations going on in Alaska, nearly all of our new soldiers coming out of training and our equipment coming from the factory floors is going to General Black’s forces. That said, I do want General Gardner to continue with his offensive against the IR. Unless Director Rubio is able to work out some sort of deal with their military leadership, General Gardner should continue as planned and move to occupy the country. What additional forces do we have available to send him right now?” asked the President.
General Branson looked through his tablet and pulled up some information. “We have three divisions completing their final train-up and equipment loadouts. We were going to send them to General Black’s group in Alaska. One is a tank division while the other two are mechanized infantry divisions.”
“What forces will General Gardner need most right now for his offensive?” asked the President.
“Presently, he has the needed forces for his offensive; if we send him additional reinforcements, it will help him during the occupation. I recommend sending him the two mechanized infantry divisions. He has armor but he’ll need more infantry if he is to capture and hold territory,” Branson explained.
“Then redirect those two divisions to the Middle East and get that tank division to Alaska,” the President directed before continuing, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve kept everyone here long enough. Please execute your orders and be ready to provide an update tomorrow at the same time.”
With that, the meeting ended.
*******
Dr. Travis Perino had a home in Baltimore before the nuclear attack. If he closed his eyes, he could still picture the beautiful view of the harbor during the summer (he would often walk there with his dog after a long shift). When the bomb was detonated, he had been on vacation in Jamaica, so he had survived, but his condo, his co-workers, his dog…everything was destroyed. It felt strange to him to not be able to go back and see it for himself; he understood that the radiation was dangerous and that “closure” was probably not the best reason for him to grab a HAZMAT suit and head to ground zero, but still, he wanted to mourn what was lost in a better way than watching news coverage of the event.
As a psychiatrist, Dr. Perino felt that he had something to offer to those that survived this horrible tragedy, so he left his tropical paradise on the first flight out and headed to Richmond, Virginia, which was one of the major hubs where the injured were being taken. Many were clearly in a state of shock, so overwhelmed by their experience that they couldn’t even function. In such cases, Travis would sit by the patient and calmly reorient them to where they were; he did have a way of speaking to people that would bring a sense of peace, and he didn’t rush any of the patients that were unable to speak. They would begin to recover with time and reassurance.
He worked with the nurses to lower the stimuli in the rooms for some of the more distressed patients; all of the beeping from IV machines, lights and general noise from so many people rushing about was quite distressing. Like many who enter a “caring” field, he poured himself out for those around him, never stopping to think about his own needs. It was only at the end of the day, when he was all alone in a hotel room and everything was quiet, that he would fall into a pool of his own grief.
Months later, he was still caring for those who had been affected by this terrible tragedy. He had stayed in Richmond to set up his own practice there; now those he was seeing were mostly dealing with the ongoing effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The signs were obvious: recurrent flashbacks or nightmares, insomnia, a heightened state of alertness/guarding, and triggering events that caused the person to go into “fight or flight” mode. His father had been a veteran of the second Iraq War, so he had seen it all firsthand. It was actually part of what had made him want to become a psychiatrist in the first place.
Back then, his Dad had been treated by doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs, who basically just shoved him full of pills and sent him on his merry way. However, those medications were not without their side effects, and his father would often complain of headaches or seem to space out in the distance, unable to focus on the people in front of him. Sometimes, the VA would mess up his medication shipment and he wouldn’t get his pills in time; those medicines aren’t meant to be stopped cold turkey, and his father would lash out like someone who is a mean alcoholic. One day his mother had enough of the whole thing, and the two of them split.
Dr. Perino wanted to be a different kind of doctor. Yes, psychiatrists can prescribe drugs to help heal the mind, and he did, but he would also work with his patients on other forms of therapy as well; eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) was probably the most useful treatment, but he also did cognitive behavioral therapy, taught coping strategies, and would generally do whatever it took to help get the patient back into a normal life again.
Listening to all of these stories of horrific experiences around Baltimore was taxing, however, and Travis had to do a lot of work with himself at the end of the day to let go of everything he had heard so that he would not hold on to it and carry it like a stone around his neck. He hadn’t always been a runner, but he took it up to help himself de-stress. When the breeze was blowing and there was a steady swish of his feet, he could almost entirely block out all of the tragic things that he had heard about. Otherwise, he usually had to have on some music or television shows of some kind to drown out the scripts of the truly awful things he heard from the survivors.
He almost hated to admit it, but he was glad that the U.S. had responded with all of those nuclear weapons. While he knew cognitively that resentment is like drinking poison and hoping that the other person will get hurt, he was truly angry over this unprovoked attack that had shattered the lives of so many. When he heard another story of a mother who lost her child in the blast while she went to work ten miles away, he wanted the IR to pay for their sins.
*******
At the University of South Florida in Tampa, Dr. Rosanna Weisz had served a relatively quiet and happy life, finally achieving tenure as a humanities and history professor. The university had a greater need for teaching history classes, but it was really the humanities that made her excited to get up in the morning; she loved to pour over books about art history, poetry, and philosophy. She was a simple creature in many ways, finding great happiness in a good cup of coffee, an intellectual conversation or an impressionist painting. Two years ago she had lived out her ultimate dream when she was able to visit Claude Monet’s gardens in France and then backpack through Europe, taking pictures of many of the sites and historical places she had taught about for so many years.
Despite being a history professor, she had more or less stayed out of politics. She did vote, but she was not especially loyal to one party over the other, and she usually made her choices mostly on the basis of personal merit instead of how they aligned to a strict set of ideological standards. However, this war was changing her day by day.
Dr. Weisz had been utterly horrified when Baltimore and New York had been bombed; she immediately donated money to some relief funds and helped organize a blood drive at USF. She wished that she could do more, but she was not trained in any sort of first aid or counseling of any kind, and her skills in French and Latin weren’t going to be especially handy for this situation. She wasn’t exactly a part of any specific religion, but she considered herself to be spiritual, and believed in a higher power (even if she couldn’t quite agree that God was the deity described in the Bible); in her own way, she would pray for all those who were suffering.
When the United States retaliated against the Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons, she was not surprised; however, the scale of the response was beyond anything that she could have imagined. Rosanna was crushed at the sheer loss of human life, and the immense suffering that had become a plague on this planet. She did not believe that evil should beget evil. She began to think of all of the families on the other side of the world that had been crushed by the
actions of the U.S. government, and though she was not often the type to cry, she set her head down on her desk and used up a few tissues with her tears.
As she composed herself and pulled her hair back out of her face, she saw an inspirational quote from Gandhi that she kept on her desk, “Be the change that you want to see.” She thought to herself, “What change do I want to bring? ” In that moment, she realized that she needed to work to prevent any future such tragedies from occurring in the world. She wanted to work to create policies that would garner more peace for the nation and the rest of the planet. Dr. Weisz did something in that moment that she had never done before, and decided to become more than just a casual participant in politics. She set to work on plans for a political movement towards peace.
For months now, this meek, normally quiet professor had been working in her downtime to organize marches and demonstrations. A friend of hers helped her to set up a website, and suddenly her thoughts were starting to gain some publicity and some traction. She was very careful to make sure that all of her events were peaceful and civil. Anything else would have defeated the purpose of her efforts. She always started any speech with the same line, “I want to thank you for being here today; I am very grateful to live in a country where we can love our nation and still disagree with our leadership.”
British Situation Room
10 Downing Street, London, England
16 June 2041
British Prime Minister Stannis Blair had been monitoring the Chinese advances in Alaska with a bit of concern. The casualties that the Chinese and Americans had been taking were horrendous and frightening. The Americans were fighting with all their grit for their homeland while the Chinese continued to pour more and more soldiers into the meat grinder that was the Alaskan front. Blair knew the mounting casualties in Alaska meant there would be fewer and fewer American resources allocated to Europe, which would make stopping the Russians that much harder.
Stannis was walking down to the Situation Room (located deep under the residence) to meet with his senior military advisors and get an update on the war and the next steps. He signaled for everyone to remain seated as he walked into the room, and made his way to the center of the table to take his seat. He saw General Sir Michael Richards, the British Army Chief of the Defense Staff; he was in charge of the overall British Defense Forces. Admiral Sir Mark West was there as well; he was the First Sea Lord and the man in charge of all naval forces. Seated next to him was General Sir Nick Wall, Chief of the General Staff for the Army, and last but not least was Air Chief Marshal, Sir Andrew Trenchard from the Royal Air Force.
These were the men responsible for the Defense of the British Isles, and for better or worse, most of Europe. Also in attendance were several individuals from the EU defense staff: General Volker Naumann, Chief of Staff of the EU Army, General Dieter Kessler, the senior Field Commander for all EU Military Forces, and their boss, Minister of Defense, André Gouin. The Americans would term this gathering of senior military leaders as a “coming to Jesus” meeting that was long overdue. The level of coordination and cooperation between the EU, British Forces and the Americans was not what it should be, and the war effort was suffering as a consequence.
Blair sat down at the table and looked briefly at his tablet. He nodded towards an aide to bring up the holographic map of the front lines across Europe and the North Sea. “Gentlemen, thank you all for being here and for agreeing to meet with my military commanders. As you all are aware, the Chinese and Russians have launched a massive invasion of the American homeland in Alaska. This means that the Americans will not be prioritizing their war effort in Europe for some time. I spoke with President Stein a few hours ago, and he informed me that they will be playing defense in Europe while they focus on finishing off the IR in the Middle East and attempting to stop the Chinese and Russians from breaking out of Alaska. That means it will be upon us to take the lead in Europe.”
“I have spoken with General Wade, the SACEUR Commander, and he has told me that he has approximately 860,000 US Forces in Europe and does not expect to receive many more forces for the foreseeable future. He has been ordered to defend Germany at all cost, but to limit his offensive operations until things stabilize in Alaska or the IR surrenders. I have spoken with General Sir Richards about our military force, and right now, we have 80,000 new recruits finishing training over the next two weeks and another 80,000 more the following month.” The PM nodded towards General Sir Richards as he continued.
“Tomorrow we will be announcing another military draft; we are going to conscript two million men and women into uniform and will begin training them as quickly as possible. Minister Gouin, what is the EU currently doing as far as troop additions? How soon will the EU be ready to assume a larger military role?”
Gouin was a pragmatic man, and had been arguing for an increase in defense forces for several years now with Chancellor Lowden. Unfortunately, those pleas had fallen on deaf ears until it was too late. Clearing his throat before he responded, Minister Gouin replied, “As of yesterday, Chancellor Lowden issued an emergency draft across the EU member states to raise the size of the EU military, and he has asked all member states to increase the size of their own state-run militaries. Spain has announced that they are drafting 400,000 people immediately, France is drafting 800,000, Germany is drafting 2.2 million, and the Italians are adding 500,000. The EU army will be increased by 600,000 once the draft has been completed. However, it will still be months before these new soldiers will be trained and ready for battle. Under the current military training programs, it will take close to three months for the first batch of soldiers to complete their training. So we are looking at graduating about 210,000 soldiers every four weeks starting in two months.”
General Dieter Kessler added, “The EU army has officially been released to my full command as of three weeks ago from Chancellor Lowden. I have begun coordination with General Wade, and my force of 600,000 soldiers is currently moving to reinforce the German army in Austria and the Italian army in Slovenia. This is where General Wade wants our army to hold the line. I am confident that my soldiers can do that, and I do apologize that our Chancellor had not released our forces sooner, but we are here now and will start to take the Russians on.”
General Sir Nick Wall joined the conversation. “The past is the past; we must focus on the present if we are to have a future. General Wade has said that his force, along with the bulk of the German army, will be able to hold the Russians at bay in the Berlin area. They have ceded the city to them rather than destroy the metropolis in the process of trying to defend it. General Wade and Field Marshal Schoen are looking to engage the bulk of the Russian armored forces near Berlin in the near future. We will be assisting them in that effort by providing two additional armored divisions and a massive increase in air support once the operation gets underway.” General Wall highlighted the battle plans on the holographic map, along with the disposition of the enemy force.
Minister Gouin felt the need to reassure his British colleagues. “PM Blair, I know there has been a lot of tension between our governments since the start of the war. I cannot change or fix the past, but I can assure you that I am now fully in control of the EU’s military effort and things are going to change. We are fully committed to stopping the Russians, and will not leave this to the individual states’ armies to do on their own. Any help or assistance we can provide, we will.”
PM Blair sat back in his chair for a second taking in everything his EU colleagues had just said and was satisfied with their response. “Thank you Minister Gouin and Generals for meeting with us and for assuring us of your intentions. The UK is ultimately a small island nation, and there is only so much we can do. If the Germans had not retooled their economy for war and been such tenacious fighters, I think we would be having a much different conversation. As it stands, I believe there is still time to prevent the Russians from conquering Europe…We know what needs to happen, so let’s end the meeting o
n a high note and move forward with a renewed resolve to work together and defeat the Russians,” the PM said as the meeting concluded.
*******
The war in Europe had been picking up steam again as the weather turned from spring to summer. The MiG40s continued to cause havoc in the air for the Allies, though the new radar systems the Americans were employing were starting to turn the tide. The Russians continued to pour hundreds of thousands of soldiers into Poland, the Balkans and Hungary, readying themselves for the summer offensive. It was just a matter of when, not if, they would attack. In the meantime, the Allies continued to prepare themselves to meet a numerically superior force.
Red Square
16 June 2041
Moscow, Russia
National Control Defense Center
Once it became clear that the war with the Americans, the European Union and the United Kingdom was not going to turn nuclear (or at least not yet), President Fradkov moved all military operations and activities back to the National Control Defense Center (NCDC) facility, just down the road from Red Square. The NCDC was a massive edifice that replaced the older Ministry of Defense building in the mid-2020s. For months, the war effort had been run out of the Presidential Command Bunker under the Kremlin, but as the war continued to drag on, moving the operations to the NCDC became more of a necessity; the number of personnel needed to manage a global war was immense, and this was the only facility that could truly meet this need. This center could control all military activities around the globe and run the operations of the entire economy and country (there was also a nuclear shelter in the basement and underground tunnels connecting it to a number of critical facilities throughout the city). President Fradkov began to spend more and more time at the NCDC.
